Five months later, he left the U. S., stopped paying his mortgage and his home heating oil bill and let the bank initiate foreclosure proceedings, but it is possible that step was made, not out of financial desperation, but because it made economic sense. Until that departure, there was no trail of lawsuits or missed payments indicating he was in trouble. In fact, his financial history was clean enough that Wachovia Bank gave him a $ 65,000 home equity line in January 2009. a steady white-collar job as a budget analyst for years — a job he only gave up when he left the country. Live Pain Free THE NEW LIFE LASER ® MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH IN PAIN RELIEF: HIGH RATE OF SUCCESS AFTER FIRST TREATMENT! This Unique Laser Care From Advanced Health Center Offers Profound Healing Relief From Chronic Pains With San Jose’s Only New Life Paniflex ™ Healing System ® We’re Accepting New Patients! Call Our Friendly Staff Now If You Are Currently Suffering with: • Arthritis “You don’t need to have a lot...

: Mom IIat Cookie $2.9 $2.95 j Heart Shaped "Mom" • Petit Fours ■ Fresh Fruit Tartf.s $2 : Orange Chiffon ... $17 • Cappuccino Cup Cake j Princess Bonnet Cake 504 BAY AVENUE, CAPI' (831)462.1200 WWW.G Bakery &amp;amp; Rosticceria ' breakfast Bay Federal iSo+uteU UJ/Uek By ROBERT BURNS Associated Press CHERIE CULLEN/ U. S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in white shirt, speaks with U. S. Army majors during an informal roundtable with the officers at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Friday. must be repeated in additional years. “Simply taking a few percent off the top of everything on a one-time basis will not do,” he said.“ These savings must stem from root-and-branch changes that can be sustained and added to over time.” “More is needed — much more,” he said. Gates noted that for the past two years he has focused his budget cuts on major weapons programs that he believed were unnecessary or unaffordable. He managed to g...

The Brisenos are proud of their son’s service despite the price they all pay for it now. “The only way we can move on with our lives is to hire and interview, from the start, these nurses,” he said.“ One of them straight up told us, ‘ I’m in it for the money.’ We just looked at each other and said, ‘ You’re in the wrong house. You’re not coming back here.’” Jay’s father has a plan: forming his own home health care agency to supply nurses for Jay and other wounded veterans. “Most patients in this kind of condition would not be able to live at home,” Wallin said. The Brisenos “are doing an incredible job,” he said.“ They don’t take enough breaks. They’re almost too dedicated.” The degree of care the Brisenos provide is unusual, said Dr. Mitchell Wallin, one of Jay’s doctors and a neurologist at Georgetown University and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D. C. When the doctors showed Eva his big wound and how to care for it,“ I thought at first, ‘ I cannot do it,’” she...

Irwin, the Colorado medical pot grower, said mothers who use marijuana face a stigma men don’t. Irwin says she secretly used marijuana while pregnant to fight morning sickness and after giving birth to battle postpartum depression. Since she started growing pot, Irwin said she’s run into many moms who admit to using the drug. She argues that even children could benefit from marijuana use, though Irwin never gave either of her kids pot nor smoked it in front of them. In fact, she remembers flushing her son’s pot down the toilet when he was a teen. But last year, after her nowgrown son started a Denver marijuana dispensary, Irwin sold her hair salon, bought a greenhouse and started raising pot for him. asking members to“ come out” about their pot use this Mother’s Day and argue that pot is safer than booze. The group says it has about 20,000 members nationwide. SAFER’s online Mother’s Day card has a typical start —“ Thank you for raising me to be thoughtful and compassionate” — then t...

Arpaio said his deputies arrested 25 illegal immigrants working in a Phoenix business Thursday. He said some of them had phony IDs. “I should be a hero,” the sheriff said.“ They should be thanking me.” But Fernando Romero, president of Hispanics in Politics, accused Arpaio of “splitting immigrant fami- violations, conducts crime and immigration sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods, and frequently raids workplaces for people in the U. S. illegally. LAS VEGAS — About 200 protesters squared off with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio over Arizona’s tough new immigration law before he spoke to a conservative group in Las Vegas. For about 20 minutes Friday, the sheriff stood just feet from protesters outside Stoney’s Rockin’ Country bar and dance hall as demonstrators yelled“ Arpaio go home!” and“ Racist!” “He needs to go to Germany and to concentration camps, where his beliefs are valued,” protester Sara Elsing, 50, told the Las Vegas Sun. Arpaio’s visit was scheduled before passage o...

Wardak and nine other members of the Afghan Cabinet are accompanying Karzai to the United States. The trip comes as 30,000 U. S. reinforcements President Barack Obama dispatched to the war head to the country. About 4,500 have deployed, with another 18,000 due to arrive by late spring and the rest by “I do believe it is a propaganda campaign rather than a reality,” Wardak said. In his op-ed, Karzai appeared to highlight the role the militants in Pakistan play in Afghanistan. Kabul accuses Pakistan of harboring militants who launch attacks across the border into Afghanistan. In Pakistan on Saturday, a spokesman for the Taliban claimed they were set to launch new attacks and ha d dispatched suicide bombers to the United States. Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, told The Associated Press that the attacks would avenge U. S. drone bombings in tribal areas close to the Afghan border. mer police chief and current vice president of the shura, or council, in Arghandab distri...

Aviation authority was doing a flight evaluation with an aircraft equipped with sounding devices to gather a maximum of information in order to determine whether the closure of some airports may be warranted. In Paris, Jerome Lecou, an engineer with the national weather service Meteo France, said that the Civil “Depending on the winds, the ash could impact south France and possibly north Italy tomorrow,” said Eurocontrol spokeswoman Kyla Evans. to 35,000 feet — right in the path of most trans-Atlan-tic flights. The Brusselsbased air traffic management agency said the area of potential ash contamination was expanding in particular between the ground and 20,000 feet. “To not increase further the loss of standing and credibility for the Catholic church well beyond the Augsburg diocese, it Mixa had offered to step down amid persistent allegations that he hit children while a priest decades ago and of financial irregularities at a children’s home he was responsible for. Pressure on the V...

Campbell is expected to meet Suu Kyi, who has accused the ruling junta of trying to engineer the u p c omi n g e l e c t i o n s t o ensure it retains its half-century-long grip on power. Relations between Myanmar, also known as Bur- ma, and the U. S. have been strained since its military crushed pro-democracy protests in 1988, killing hun- KHIN MAUNG WIN/ AP FILE Myanmar’s prime minister Gen. Thein Sein, left, shakes hands with U. S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell in Naypyitaw, Myanmar in November 2009. A government official said Campbell is scheduled to meet Sein, Foreign Minister Nyan Win and Information Minister Kyaw San. Washington has said it will still maintain political and economic sanctions toward the junta until talks with Myanmar’s generals result in change. reversed the Bush administration’s isolation of Myanmar in favor of dialogue with the military junta, which brooks no dissent and detained Suu Kyi for 14 of the last 20 years. Campbell, on his second visi...

The First Amendment “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. ...” WWW. SANTACRUZSENTINEL. COM SUNDAY May 9, 2010 WfftyWash.FbgfcV^tereGraip MICHAEL JUNG: Publisher DON MILLER: Editor MIKE BLAESSER: Internet Director CEIL CIRILLO: Community Member A money too far PAUL S o, is Greece the next Lehman? No. It isn’t either big enough or interconnected enough to cause global financial markets to freeze up the way they did in 2008. Whatever caused that brief 1,000-point swoon in the Dow, it wasn’t justified by actual events in Europe. Nor should you take seriously analysts claiming The problem, as obvious in prospect as it is now, is that Europe lacks some of the key attributes of a successful currency area. Above all, it lacks a central government. Consider the often-made In some ways, this is a chronicle of a crisis foretold. I remember quipping, back when the Maastr...

Bill Selvidge lives in Santa Cruz. SUBMIT YOUR OPINION We can all use help TONI CORRIGAN, Santa Cruz In light of recent events in Santa Cruz, it’s incomprehensible to me that our city and county would expend such a large share of our limited resources on the BADGES ( Before Aggressive Drivers Get Everyone Stopped) program. One hundred tickets in Scotts Valley. Wow. Excellent revenue for an afternoon’s work, but it won’t go very far in paying for the eight new officers hired by the city of Santa Cruz to do what? Stop aggressive drivers? Our resources would be better spent putting officers in neighborhoods instead of sitting on their backsides waiting for some poor unsuspecting sucker just trying to get to work or home to exceed the speed limit by 10 mph. I’m just not threatened enough by aggressive drivers, I guess. ICE leaves me cold Reasonable to me I guess that’s only when it’s convenient. Immigrants aren’t the problem. Poverty, broken homes, discrimination and economic recession ...

When large systems fail, our confidence in our ability to control what we’ve set in motion wears thin. British Petroleum executives say that they’ve never tried to cap a leaking well at 5,000 feet below the sea. The plastic containment booms they’ve deployed are breaking up in big surf. BP’s impotence in the face of such a huge disaster makes a mockery of the reassurances recently given by our leaders that offshore drilling technology is too advanced to fail. Remember when nuclear power was going to be too cheap to meter and banks and car It would be easy to say that the Gulf Coast just has bad luck. But companies were too big to fail? Bill Monning represents the 27th Assembly District, which includes the cities of Capitola, Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz County, as well as portions of Monterey and Santa Clara counties. This week, the victims are the Gulf State fishermen, the dock workers, and anyone involved The California ballot initiative to suspend implementation of ...

He was a native of Racine, WI, born on May 2, 1928. Starting in 1966, Jim worked for Prime Leather Finishes in Milwaukee, WI, and was in sales for 21 years, ser vicing the West Coast. His largest account was Salz Tanner y in Santa Cruz, CA. In 1971 Jim moved to Santa Cruz and made it his home. James Laznicka passed away suddenly in Santa Cruz, CA, on May 2, 2010, of heart disease. It was his bir thday and he was 82 years old. 423-5721 The Quality Standard in Santa Cruz A private family Memorial was held for Dick. In lieu of flowers donations may be made in his name to Boys Town California at 2740 North Grand Ave.-2nd Floor, Santa Ana, CA 92705, or Hospice of Santa Cruz County, 940 Disc Dr., Scotts Valley, Ca 95066. Arrangements are under the direction of Benito &amp;amp; Azzaro Pacific Gardens Chapel in Santa Cruz. Dick enjoyed a simple life, and his number one priority was always the well being of his family.“ We will miss you always.” Richard Earl ( Dick) Berg passed away on M...

A music memorial will be held for Larr y on Saturday, May 15, 2010 at Santa Cruz First Congregational Church, 900 High Street, SC. The service will begin at 1: 00 pm. Please come and celebrate his life in music. A reception will follow SPILL Continued from A1 / •Mi lifelong guidance is a precious thing Have a special Mother's Day, Mission Chapel 1927 Ocean St. (831) 426-1601 LIC. NO. FD 147f. Oakwood Chapel 3301 Paul Sweet Rd (831)475-2464 LIC. NO. FD1530 www.scmemorial.com 1 ®2(»l MKJ Marketii By MARK THIESSEN Associated Press SERVICE The answers to your questions are just a click away at the Sentinel’s Customer Service Website. w w w. s a n t a c r u z s e n t i n e l . c o m Click on Customer Service. 831-706-3201 Pet Remembrances Published once a month, the first Sunday of each month. These paid remembrances must be scheduled one week prior to the run date. For more information call: 706-3202 Mon-Fri 8am-5pm Martini of Santa Cruz County v Dr. J's H Foot V Notes m “A fighter for ...

SUNDAY MAY 9, 2010 issues immigration IMMIGRATION UCSC conference tackles By JORY JOHN newsroom@ santacruzsentinel. com Victor Silverman, associate professor of history at Pomona College in Claremont, who “As most of us are historians, immigration is a question that’s always been central to American history,” Krochmal said. “But this is a particularly good time to look closely at the issue. We had a good brainstorming session and it’s been a great conference.” Max Krochmal, a doctoral candidate at Duke University, presented a paper on the history of the Black-Brown Coalition in San Antonio. Krochmal said the conference allowed him to receive immediate feedback and constructive criticism. a real open exchange of information, interaction and learning.” The full-day event, attended by an estimated 150 people, included presentations by UCSC faculty, students and guest experts on subjects such as California labor conflicts, immigrant worker rights, integration, activism, grassroots organ...